Message from the CEO

Welcome and thank you for visiting our website.

LakePharma started in 2009 in the Bay Area with a vision to make meaningful impact by providing quality service to biologics drug developers. The company has grown into a full-scale CRDMO that offers a wide and complete range of services—from early stage discovery and development to manufacturing for clinical trials. Our geographic footprint has expanded to include five locations in key biopharmaceutical hubs on both the East and West Coast.

What makes our business model unique is our relentless pursuit in expanding our capabilities and capacity, as well as our robust operating system. To our valued clients, this means quicker access to new technology platforms and faster turnaround time for complex biologics development and manufacturing.

LakePharma’s mission is to enable and support the discovery and development of the biologics of tomorrow. We look forward to partnering with you to make a meaningful and positive impact on health: the treatment of diseases, development of therapies, and the overall availability of medicines.

Hua Tu, Ph.D.Founder & CEO

Featured Employees

David Boyle

Chief Financial Officer

David Boyle was appointed to Chief Financial Officer in 2018. He has vast experience in financial leadership at technology, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. Prior to LakePharma, David Boyle served as Chief Financial Officer at Direct Flow Medical, AVI BioPharma, and XOMA, Ltd., and was Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Salix Pharmaceuticals. Boyle also served in various finance, administration, and development leadership roles at Serono, Intel, and Polycom, Inc. In addition to being an avid table tennis player, David is a former professional cellist and continues to perform with Bay Area groups on a regular basis.

Douglas Demian, M.S.

Director, Pharma Assay Development and Screening (MA)

Doug serves as Director, of LakePharma’s Assays Group in Worcester and is responsible for oversight of the Pharma Assay Portfolio. Doug brings almost 20 years assay development and screening experience in large and small molecule drug discovery, the majority of which occurred at Pfizer’s Discovery Technology Center in Cambridge, MA prior to joining LakePharma in Worcester in 2008. Doug earned his B.A. in biology at Hiram College and his M.S. in zoology at the University of New Hampshire. In his spare time, Doug is a passionate woodworker and enjoys building furniture, roasting coffee, brewing beer and the smoking and curing of meats.

Raphael Levy, Ph.D.

Director, Antibody Engineering

Raphael Levy joined LakePharma in March 2017, as the new Director of Antibody Engineering. He has vast experience in the fields of Antibody Discovery & Engineering. Previously, he worked for XOMA for over 10 years, as a major contributor in multiple antibody discovery programs, project team leader, author of articles, and inventor of patents. Raphael was fortunate to complete his postdoctoral fellowship in Prof. James Marks’s lab at UCSF where his work in high resolution antibody epitope mapping and affinity maturation using yeast surface display was published in highly regarded scientific journals, such as Nature Biotechnology and the Journal of Molecular Biology. He earned his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology under the supervision of acclaimed Prof. George Georgiou at the University of Texas at Austin, focusing on the improvement of folding and bacterial expression of antibody fragments. Raphael completed his M.Sc. in Biotechnology at Tel-Aviv University, Israel and earned a B.Sc. degree in Biology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Aside from his dedication on antibody research, Raphael enjoys traveling, biking, reading, watching independent movies, tennis and having fun with his adorable wife and son.

Melissa Asllani, Ph.D.

Senior Scientist, Pharma Assay Development and Screening (MA)

Melissa is a senior scientist in the Assay Services group at LakePharma where she is responsible for the planning and execution of a various of assays, including cell-based compound screening, quantitative PCR analysis, enzyme activity analysis, and a variety of ELISA technologies. From her graduate work, she also has valuable experience with molecular biology techniques, such as bacteriophage λ infection, cloning, and Southern blotting. Melissa has a B.A. degree in biochemistry from Saint Anselm College, and she obtained her Ph.D. in biochemistry from Duke University. In her spare time, Melissa enjoys baking sweet treats and watching Duke basketball.

Hajime “Haj” Tada

General Counsel

Haj joined LakePharma to serve as the company’s first general counsel. He is responsible for all legal and compliance matters, including corporate governance, technology licensing and sales support, as well as developing the in-house legal and compliance functions. Before joining LakePharma as General Counsel, Haj worked at Hewlett-Packard’s spinoff, Agilent Technologies, serving as the lead attorney for the life-sciences division that grew to become the face of Agilent and, at the request of the CEO, taking on the additional duties of Acting General Counsel for close to a year. Prior to his work at Agilent, he held various legal positions, including at the City Attorney’s Office for the City of San Francisco. A born and raised New Yorker, Haj received his law degree from NYU School of Law, received his undergraduate degree from Yale, moved to San Francisco and never looked back.

Bill Hermans

Director of Cell Culture, site manager at the LakePharma Vector Center

Bill Hermans is the Director of Cell Culture and Site Manager at the LakePharma Vector Center. Bill has a distinguished career in protein expression, which began in 2004 at Blue Sky BioServices, a company acquired by LakePharma. As Director of Cell Culture and Site Manager for the Gene to Protein Center in Massachusetts, Hermans directs lentivirus and AAV production services for use in gene therapy research, as well as baculovirus and mammalian protein expression. Before 2004, Hermans worked at Pfizer as a scientist. He has a degree in biology from Rhode Island College.

Patrick Cushing, Ph.D.

Director Protein Sciences

Patrick serves as Director of LakePharma’s Protein Sciences group in Worcester and is responsible for oversight of functional protein isolation for R&D and drug discovery. He has worked for Blue Sky and now LakePharma since 2013. Cushing holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Dartmouth College. Outside of the laboratory, Patrick enjoys beer brewing, hiking, running, and alpine climbing.

Hoa Giang

Senior Scientist

Hoa joined LakePharma in 2017 as a Senior Scientist to work in antibody engineering and antibody discovery using phage displays. She is an experienced scientist with a hands-on background in the construction and validation of Fab naïve phage libraries. She worked in research at Compugen, Surrozen, XOMA, and Maxygen. Hoa holds a BS in Genetics and an MS in Plant Biology from UC Davis.

Kristin Rider, M.S.

Director, Sales

Kristin leads a team of client-focused salespeople who excel at providing solutions to the scientific community. Kristin has been with LakePharma for over seven years, starting initially in our cell culture lab, and then moving into sales where she combines her scientific background with a passion for customer service. Kristin has been in the biotech industry for 17 years, in various areas of discovery, production, and manufacturing. She began her career at Genzyme working on technology development and manufacturing of biologics. Kristin then moved to ViaCell, where she focused on the transfer of stem cell research into ViaCell’s first cGMP facility. Kristin later moved to Novagenesis, where she oversaw the tech transfer of research protocols into cGMP manufacturing. Kristin has a B.S. and a M.S. degree in Biology from WPI.